His head, which was bare to the sun and drooped by nature like a flower, was held proudly up, and his wild eyes were flashing.

He was not supplicating for the deliverance of the people, but demanding it, and taxing Ben Aboo as a tyrant to his throat.
"Give me them up, Ben Aboo," he was saying as Israel came to the threshold, "or, if they die in their prison, one thing I promise you." "And pray what is that ?" said Ben Aboo.
"That there will be a bloody inquiry after their murderer." Ben Aboo's brows were knitted, but he only glanced at Katrina, and made pretence to laugh, and then said, "And pray, my lord, who shall the murderer be ?" Then Mohammed of Mequinez stretched out his hand and answered, "Yourself." At that word there-was silence for a moment, while Ben Aboo shifted in his seat, and Katrina quivered beside him.
Ben Aboo glanced up at Mohammed.

He was Kaid, he was Basha, he was master of all men within a circuit of thirty miles, but he was afraid of this man whom the people called a prophet.

And partly out of this fear, and partly because he had more regard to Mohammed's courageous behaviour in thus bearding him in his Kasbah and by the walls of his dungeons than to the anger his hot word had caused him, Ben Aboo would have promised him at that moment that the prisoners at Shawan should be released.
But suddenly Katrina remembered that she also had cause of indignation against this man, for it had been rumoured of late that Mohammed had openly denounced her marriage.
"Wait, Sidi," she said.

"Is not this the fellow that has gone up and down your bashalic, crying out on our marriage that it was against the law of Mohammed ?" At that Ben Aboo saw clearly that there was no escape for him, so he made pretence to laugh again, and said, "Allah! so it is! Mohammed the Third, eh?
Son of Mequinez, God will repay you! Thanks! Thanks! You could never think how long I've waited that I might look face to face upon the prophet that has denounced a Kaid." He uttered these big words between bursts of derisive laughter, but Mohammed struck the laughter from his lips in an instant.